June 12, 2003
Tufte fluffy PPPhluff
Upon Bertrand's advice, I ordered Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, which arrived in the mailbox yesterday. It's a thin booklet without hard(er) cover, which meant it survived the transatlantic shipping only after some folding wrinkles. Which is bad since the shipping was quite expensive: adding $5 onto its original price of $7. All in all, I liked browsing through it, even though I found it a bit light on content. While Tufte goes at length explaining what is wrong with PPPhluff, I find him falling a bit short on positive advice. Should we drop foils all the way then? Go back to coursebooks for providing Cocoon training? But unless you're a one-trick-pony, one typically cannot afford the investment to write a proper coursebook for each course he is teaching. Also, the technology is changing so rapidly that maintaining such a coursebook becomes a fulltime occupation. I'm a bit lost on this. Although I won't be sticking too much bullet points into my presentations anymore. I'll go for full-text instead. ;-)